Learn about Real Estate by one of the premier Real Estate Investors in New Jersey. Each week Joseph J. Zoppi will be talking about investing in real estate including buying and selling houses and apartments. Understand how the economy, the Fed and world events impact real estate and how to adjust to these dynamics.
Templar Real Estate Radio Show for August 1, 2020
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The following program was paid for by Templar Real Estate. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of the staff and management of WMTR. As always it is advisable to consult a professional before making a major decision. It’s time now for the Templar Real Estate Talk Show. Here’s your host for the program, Joseph J. Zoppi.
Joseph J. Zoppi:
Hi, welcome to Templar Real Estate Radio Show. My name is Joseph J. Zoppi, a real estate investor, consumer advocate, author, and managing partner of Templar Real Estate Enterprises. You can reach us at templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com or you could call us at 973-240-8593. Again, that’s 973-240-8593, and you could ask us any questions you have, anything you want discussed on the air, we’d be more than happy to address that as well.
My company is a real estate investment firm. We buy houses for cash, we purchase apartment buildings, we do joint ventures with other real estate investors, we loan money for rehabs, provide transactional funding or gap funding as well. We work with individuals that want to invest with us in single-family houses up to apartment buildings. We do not speculate and we’re very protective of our money and our investors’ money. I’m not a real estate agent and we’re not a brokerage. I have individuals on staff that are agents, they’re very good at what they do and they could sell your house through the Multiple Listing Service as well.
The show’s going to go over everything there is about real estate and those things that impact real estate. We’ll talk about our rehabs, some of the individuals and stories that we encountered throughout our daily activity. We’re going to go over anything that’s going to impact real estate from the economy to different laws that potentially could come up, we’re going to discuss trends in real estate. Real estate is one of your biggest investments, so the more you know about it, the better it is for you.
The show is based on my opinion and my experiences. As always, I say do your research in terms of anything to do with real estate, using the CPA, a contractor, whatever the case may be. Do your due diligence and research it very carefully. One of the things that you could always do, and we always recommend it and we do the same thing is, is that if you’re going to be hiring someone, referrals are always very, very important but those are not guaranteed. We had an individual that we brought on a while ago because I needed some additional plumbing assistance and he had good referrals, and there was an individual I talked to and she said, “Yeah, definitely go with him,” and we did and it was just a major mistake. It just was really bad and I had to cut the relationship short just because it’s just taking too long and it just really wasn’t working out, and there’s always another story why it was taking so long and it just had to be terminated, and that’s the thing. Sometimes, when things go sideways, you got to address it as quick as possible and sometimes, you have to cut off the relationship, but you need to talk about it and I know sometimes, that’s difficult, and sometimes, you could let it go through and then after that, not hire that person again.
One of the things that you always have to think about and I always say is that we talk about the bell-shaped curve with anything – with testing and any type of statistical thing, is you look at the bell-shaped curve and one of the things with the bell-shaped curve is that there’s a lot of average. That’s the big hump and that’s where the majority of the people are, and so when you’re thinking about it and you’re hiring an attorney or you’re hiring an agent, or you’re hiring anyone, most of the people are going to be in that average area, so it’s always difficult to really find those people that are very, very good. On the flipside, you can get the side where it’s really bad and there’s not as many of those but there’s a lot of average out there. It doesn’t matter who it is, there’s just a lot of average out there and sometimes, you got to go through a lot to find that good person, and it is very difficult at times. We experience it all the time and no matter how good your vetting process is, you’re going to have problems and you’re always going to have those individuals that you thought were good and then were not good. A lot of private investors invest with us and we get the stories a lot where individuals invested their money and they lost money to their advisors, things like that, and it’s really, really tough. Someone’s investing money through someone’s recommendations and then they start losing money on the stock market or whatever the investments are and it’s just really tough, and I don’t even know how those individuals stay in business or through their conscience should continue in an endeavor where you’re losing someone’s money as often as you are, so I just scratch my head at that.
We continue to receive calls from individuals that potentially could lose their house, so we work with them. Again, it’s no charge, we’ll make recommendations. Sometimes, they’ve covered everything and if that’s the case, that’s great, but we’re always here to help and we don’t charge for any of those services like that. If you’re interested in selling your house for cash, great. Give us a call, if it’s hard to sell, if it’s a hoarder’s house, it’s empty and you just need to sell it in medical bills, whatever the case may be, please give us a call in any of those situations. Also, if you have a house that’s out of state, we usually don’t buy out of New Jersey but sometimes, we do, but say you had a house in Missouri, I have a lot of investor friends throughout the country, I belong to a mastermind which is a collection of individuals that share stories and share their experiences and we work together to build our business up, and if you have a house in Missouri or any other state, I should have access to a number of individuals that would buy your house for cash, so anything out of state, please give me a call, I’d be more than happy to look into it, find a couple of investors I know, and then you could maybe engage in that, so like I said, we’re always here to help.
The other thing is that if you’re interested in selling your house into the traditional method, please give us a call. Like I said, I have lots of good agents. One of the things we bring to the table is that we’re going to come in and like other agents, we’re going to make certain suggestions and will work very closely with you. One of the things that sometimes you might need some minor repairs to your house to get it to where it should be in terms of selling it at the highest price possible, well, we have individuals that we work with constantly that work with us from a handyman service all the way up to full rehabs, so we could recommend those people and make sure we work very closely with you to make those repairs to maximize your selling price, so that’s one of the things we bring to you. As I said before, sometimes you bring on someone, you don’t know what you’re getting, so with us, these people have already been tested out, they’ve worked with us, so that’s a big, big benefit, and they could do anything from painting to driveways, to any type of repair work. And I have an individual right now, we are going to be listing her house and we’re going to go in there and we’re going to make some changes with painting and doing some work, and it’s going to cost her $2,000 or $3,000 but in the end, she’ll benefit like, $20,000 from it, so it’s kind of important. So we bring those things to the table because we’re tried-and-true with those individuals. So we do this all day long, so we know these individuals; it’s just not a reference. So that’s extremely important to maximize what you’re getting.
The other thing is, is that as I continue to say, the market is hot and now, more and more houses are coming on the market, so I’m expecting it to level off soon, but I would seize the opportunity if you’re going to sell as quickly as possible, just, we don’t know where the economy is going. We’ve talked about previously that there’s going to be a V-shaped recovery, I don’t think that. The Fed doesn’t think that, so that’s kind of important to factor that in into your decision. I think as the second half of the year starts to pick up, they’re going to continue to push money to the economy which is good and it’s going to keep everything afloat, but as time progresses, I think it’s just going to wear on the economy in general. You have a lot of businesses that are marginally profitable, that’s just the way it is. So with things being closed down, sales not as strong in certain areas, not as strong as they could be, I think it’s going to put a number of businesses in bankruptcy. Certain businesses are killing it, like Amazon, but other businesses that are in main street USA are hurting, and it’s going to continue like that for a while, so that’s a big concern of ours right now. So that’s something to think about. When you’re thinking of planning to sell your house, I know you might not be ready yet but I would work very hard to try to put things in place if you need to sell your house or you want to sell your house. I think that’s really, really important.
The other thing is, is that if you know of anyone that wants to sell their house, please give us a call, we’ll pay you a finder’s fee, everything is private so you don’t have to worry about that. Also, I’m constantly looking for apartment buildings, preferably 100 units or more, but we do do smaller units but if you have anything large scale, it doesn’t matter what the state it’s in. For apartment buildings, we do it throughout the country. For purchasing houses, we purchase exclusively in New Jersey right now. We’re probably going to expand eventually into Pennsylvania, but right now, it’s just New Jersey, but if you have any apartment buildings, you know of any, please give us a call, we’d be really anxious to look into it.
In the second half of the segment which is going to come up soon, I’m going to talk about a few things in terms of what we’ve encountered this week, rehabs, certain things that depending on – from a political perspective, which I don’t like to talk about politics, but it’s concerning mine and how it’s going to impact real estate. I’m going to also tell you about a unique story between a landlord and a tenant that had a service dog and another tenant at the same building that had a severe pet allergy, so it’s pretty unique and it’s crazy to some extent, and again, we’re going to talk a little bit more about the economy and real estate, commercial real estate in general, okay?
So thank you very much and I’m going to close this segment out. Again, if you ever need anything, please give us a call or contact us at templarcashforhouses.com. I’ll see you shortly.
Joseph Zoppi:
Hello, welcome back to the Templar Real Estate Talk Show. My Name Is Joseph J. Zoppi, managing partner of Templar Real Estate Enterprises. You can reach as a templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com. That’s one word, or you could call us at 973-240-8593.
So this week, we had a house we just finished and we’re putting it on the market, and we had a new AC unit put in and everything, and this past week was very, very hot, so we went upstairs the day of – and we had just finished staging, everything was done, and went upstairs and it was Sunday, it was very hot and it was just really warm up there, so everybody was commenting on it and it wasn’t a good thing and they all loved the house, and afterwards, we looked into the situation, I’m seeing what we needed to do and obviously, we definitely need an attic fan, so we could hook up attic fans, there’s different ones that go into the attic itself, there’s ones that go on the roof and pull the heat from the attic itself, so those attic fans could reduce the heat in your attic between 40° and 50°, so that’s considerable. And we had that installed immediately by one of my contractors, and it pulled the house out immediately as a result of that, but that’s just something in case you were encountering that on the second floor and you don’t have two zones for the AC unit, that is the best solution. There’s also, what you can do is also insulate the attic. Our attic was really small, so the insulation wasn’t going to really help but the attic fan dropped the temperature considerably down, and we’re probably going to also put some ceiling fans as well to circulate the air to cool it down even further and just make it feel better, but that happens sometimes. We are pushing hard to get things on the market quickly and certain things come up. We don’t live in these houses, so we don’t experience some of those things that a normal individual living in the house would do, but again, I always say if there’s a problem, you have to meet it quickly and address it, so we have a number of individuals that are very interested in the house. It’s only been on the market for a few days and we already have a lot of interest in it which is good, and usually, our houses sold extremely quickly because of all the things we do with it from the upgrades to the staging. We get a lot of compliments in our staging and that’s something that when you sell a house, it’s very, very important how to stage the house or do certain things to highlight the house, and the individuals we have on staff that sell houses for individuals will tell you certain things. We’re going to say maybe get rid of certain furniture because you want to open up the house and make them bigger, so there’s a lot of things you can do in it. It doesn’t necessarily cost you money but you can do and all of a sudden, it just transforms the house. As well as maybe $1,000 here, a couple thousand dollars relatively speaking could translate into a $20,000 difference in terms of the selling price of the house, so that’s kind of – it’s very important, not kind of important. It’s very, very important.
So the other thing that I’d like to discuss also which we are concerned about and it’s not based on whether it’s Democrat or Republican, but I guess in some ways, it is, is that with potentially the changing of the guard in November, there are certain things that might impact real estate and the economy in general, and Biden has a plan in terms of spending additional money on social issues, which is all great stuff, but what’s going to happen is he wants to take a lot of this or some of the money from real estate investors in certain profits, and funnel it, fund some of these initiatives, and my view on this, and a lot of individuals, business people – not all – feel that the money they’re taking from a business is going to hurt the economy in general. So what do I mean by that? By reducing and keeping the tax rate low, first of all, the money that I make or other individuals make, invest in the business, and what we do invest in the business is growing the business and as a result of growing the business, we hire more people and right now, we are chugging along, we give a lot of work to our contractors and a lot of them are individuals from other countries – Uruguay and Guatemala, and things like that and they are doing really well, but if you take that money and you start – and that translates to them receiving money and they could spend money, so on and so forth. And also, we give more money to charities, traditionally, just in general, everyone. So it’s a ripple effect.
Now, when you start tightening those things up, sometimes, unfortunately, it has the reverse effect and one of the things that Biden is saying is that any profit from real estate or after a certain amount is going to be taxed. Now traditionally, individuals that have a property and they sell it, they’re going to get capital gains on it, but if they roll it over into another property and there’s all these [inaudible 0:22:36] – I’m not going to get into those, they will not get taxed, so all that money will get into the next property which will be probably larger or usually larger, so it continues to grow, and that’s a good thing, and that’s going to be impacted considerably as a result of that. I have an individual, he works for us and he does a lot of odd jobs, and a hard worker, Hispanic guy and he was just a great, great guy. He said to me, “Joe, one of my goals and dreams is that I want to buy –” right now, he has like a two-family and he says, “I want to sell it and get a larger apartment building, so I could pass it on to my son,” so he has real estate and he could receive that money, the rents and things like that, so it’s easier on him, and that’s the name of the game. Passing real estate onto your family and helping them out and helping your kids out, and it’s done constantly throughout the country, and it’s going to impact a lot of people as a result of that. And I don’t know what other things or what other type of tax implications are, it’s still early so we don’t know, but there’s a lot of talk on those things, so it’s a great concern of us as a company and where we’re going to be able to grow or how much we’re going to be able to grow going forward. Sometimes, double you know is better than double you don’t know, and like I said, that’s a very big concern of ours. So we’ll see how it progresses accordingly.
Another thing is, is that with this pandemic, there’s a lot of negative as a result of that but one of the positive things is that my younger son, he’s been working in the business since fifth grade, he’s going into ninth grade now, so he’s done stuff for us, he’s helped rehab some of the homes, and in terms of light construction and things like that and a lot of yard work for us, and he’s right now taking pictures for us, so it’s been really good that because he’s not going to any camps this summer, because they’ve all been canceled, he’s been spending a lot more time with me which has been really great. We’ve been going on visits to different houses, he takes pictures. He’s very good at it from a photography perspective, so he’s taking pictures for us when we are listing houses and he’s just learning the business, so he’s really into the business, so it’s pretty cool. When I was picking him up, it was last year, he said to me, and I don’t know where he got this from, so he was in eighth grade at the time, he said, “Dad,” he said, “Well, I plan to go to business school, college, and learn business, and then after that, I want obviously work for the company, your company, and shortly after that, I would hope to become a junior partner.” I said, “Where are you getting this from?” I’m glad he’s very ambitious, but it was just really, really funny that he’s talking about a junior partnership. He says, “Dad, eventually, you know, partnership.” I said, “Of course,” and it’s interesting and it’s great that he’s thinking that way. He has always been one for money and calculating, things like that. It’s pretty interesting. He’s been like that from when he was four years old. He has always been like that, and now, he’s trying to work on a website for all his pictures that he wants to sell them via this website, so I’m going to work with him on it but it’s pretty cool that he could be part of this and it’s very rewarding seeing him as he’s growing and I’m very proud of him, as well as my older son which is finishing up his nursing but he was working with me sometimes but he’s been so busy with nursing and EMT that he really can’t right now, but next year, after he graduates, he wants to jump into it as well and help me out and start investing, so we are really looking forward to that and I’m really happy for them that they can do that.
One of the things that I’m seeing with the change of subject is commercial real estate, so commercial real estate is going to get clobbered even further. We’ve had some challenges in commercial real estate and we don’t deal with commercial real estate per se, strip malls, things like that. Ours is always apartment buildings and we have always shied away from commercial real estate, but they’re going to get hit a lot harder. New York City is going to be devastated, I think, it really is. Less people are going to be in the city, they’re going to be doing a lot more remote working and there’s going to be major shortfalls. There’s current shortfalls right now, major ones for New York City for taxes and things coming in, sales tax, so on and so forth, so it’s a ripple effect. And in general, malls are going to be challenged considerably and you have these anchor stores like Sears and Macy’s, and a number of them are going out of business. Sears is a big one. If you look into some of the strip malls, on Parsippany, there used to be on 46th, a Kmart and they haven’t been there for years, and if you go through there, there’s a number of other stores like motels that are no longer there and a number of other stores, so there’s going to be some challenges with commercial real estate. Now, they’re talking about with some of these malls, because they’re vacant, they’re going to turn them temporarily into drive-in theaters where they use the parking lots and you could do a drive-in theater, so that’s pretty unique, but that’s not going to save them, and they’re talking about converting malls to a warehouse space because of the increase in Amazon and things like that, and online stores. Again, that might help a little bit. They’re talking about some converting to apartment buildings. These are all going to help but still, with that being said, there’s going to be a lot of challenges with your commercial real estate in general.
So we’re coming to an end right now. I like to thank you again for listening and again, if you have any questions, please give us a call at 973-240-8593, and we’d be more than happy to address any questions you have. Thank you very much, God bless and take care.
The preceding program was paid for by Templar Real Estate. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of the staff and management of WMTR. As always it is advisable to consult a professional before making a major decision.
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